Blackwell's to open 15 pop-up shops around Oxford

Blackwell’s is set to open 15 pop-up shops at venues around Oxford to coincide with Oxford Literary Festival.

Blackwell’s is set to open 15 pop-up shops at venues around Oxford to coincide with Oxford Literary Festival.

Altogether the Blackwell’s team will attend 350 events other nine days of the festival, running from 25th March- 2nd April, giving festival-goers the opportunity to buy books through 15 pop-up shops.

Blackwell’s will open the pop-up venues in addition to its specially-erected marquee in the heard of Oxford. As well as hosting the festival bookshop, this year, the marquee will also host a series of 'Marquee Moments', where guest speakers will give free-to-attend 30 minute talks.

Lined up so far to give talks are Archie Brown, Emeritus professor of politics at the University of Oxford, who will be discussing his book The Myth of the Strong Leader, Peter Wilson, professor of History of War at the University of Oxford, will be discussing his book The Holy Roman Empire- A Thousand Years of Europe's History, and local poet Kieron Winn, will be discussing his book The Mortal Man. Representatives of Blackwell’s Rare books team will also showcase some of the most valuable books available to purchase from the Rare Books Department and offer advice about owning, caring for and knowing the value of a rare book.

Zool Verjee, deputy manager at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford, said: “The festival is a thrilling time of year for us. As booksellers, we are always a little star struck by the many writers who make up the festival line-up, but we also have our work cut out at this challenging time of year. There's a good deal of hard graft involved in creating a marquee bookshop in 48 hours, as well as running mini bookshops in so many additional venues around Oxford, but it's also great for morale, as exhaustion is just about kept at bay by the huge adrenalin rush.”

He added: “Above everything else, we love the fact that so many thousands of additional book-lovers visit Oxford during these ten incredible days every year.”

Oxford Literary Festival will this year host authors such as Hilary Mantel, Vikram Seth, Alexander McCall Smith, Penelope Lively and William Boyd as well as Jeremy Paxman, Nigella Lawson and Toby Jones, while the line-up of Children’s events includes appearances by Jessica Ennis-Hill, Giles Andrae, Julian Clary, and Simon Mayo.